Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and process for notification of potential health conditions, more specifically to a system and process for notification of contagion risk conditions and mitigation thereof.
Description of the Related Art
A humidifier is generally an appliance that increases humidity in a single room, house, or building. Common humidifiers include point-of-use humidifiers, which are commonly used to humidify a single room, and whole-house or furnace humidifiers, which connect to a home's HVAC system to provide humidity to the entire house. Humidifiers are often used to relieve dry and scratchy lips and skin, help asthma suffers by providing moisture for the respiratory system, decrease furnace use due to humidified air's warmer feeling, and preventing uncomfortable static shock that causes electronic equipment to fail by reducing the static electricity in the room. However, it is known that overuse of a humidifier or the high humidification of indoor air with forecast increase in dewpoint can raise the relative humidity to high levels, promoting the growth of dust mites, the viability of contagion, mold, fungus, and maladies such as “humidifier lung.”
A dehumidifier is generally a household appliance which reduces the level of humidity in the air, usually for health reasons. Higher humidity air can cause mold and mildew to grow inside the excessively humid environment, both of which pose health risks. A dehumidifier can also connect to a home's HVAC system to provide dehumidified air to the entire building.
While the humidifier and dehumidifier can generally impact health conditions, the art has yet to apply them to function in a zone that in order to warn and minimizes spread of a wide spectrum of contagions. In disease transmission, two key person-to-person possible transmission routes include airborne transmission and indirect transmission via fomites. In airborne transmission, the pathogen is may be spread through exhalation, coughing, sneezing, or similar actions, where it is subsequently inhaled or comes into contact with the recipient's membranes such as open sores, wounds. In fomite transmission, the fomite, an inanimate object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms, harbors the infections organism on a surface. The second person touches the fomite and subsequently a membranous surface such as the eyes, ear, mouth, or nose, where the contagion enters the system.
The current solutions to contagion spread focus on barriers such as gloves, masks, isolation of the infected individuals, vaccines, and chemical sanitizers or disinfectants. However, those may not be practical as gloves may not be available, not all infected individuals are known, and some people are unable or unwilling to vaccinate or apply sanitizers. For the above reasons, it would be advantageous to have a system and process which minimizes contagion spread via humidification control.